New translations, more sales for Pope’s book of poems

Pope John Paul II’s most recent book of poetry has sold more than 600,000 copies and will soon be released in Japanese, the Vatican announced March 2.

“The Roman Triptych” is a three-part meditation on nature, life and death. Since the book first hit the shelves a year ago, it has been translated into 21 languages, most recently Japanese and Bulgarian. About 600,000 copies have been sold in the original Polish, 30,000 in Italian and 12,000 in German.

All proceeds from the sale of the book go to papal charities.

This is the first book of poetry the prolific pontiff has written since he became Pope in 1978. He had numerous poems, essays and plays published prior to his pontificate.